


Silent Wings

by winterwhite



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-30
Updated: 2016-09-30
Packaged: 2018-08-18 17:59:36
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 739
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8170739
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/winterwhite/pseuds/winterwhite
Summary: Jesse learns the news.
Probably not part of Elemental Forces, just an answer to prompt. Oneshot.





	

There's an enormous bang, and the little cabin feels like the wall shook. Glass shatters.

Jesse is out of the window in a whirl of red serape (the thick folds useful to keep him from shredding himself, the chaps protecting his legs, fuck everyone who ever sneered at his impracticality) and into the brush. He's circling the cabin before he realizes there's no followup shouts, no pouring smoke, no one in position to cover the breaching attackers. There's just blood drip-drip-dripping off a long graze down his arm. He should probably figure out some armor for that, although he had it over his head, maybe something on the inside of his hat. But not to be considered now. Now it's time to find out what that was.

 So he waits for a half-hour, patiently pressing a corner of his shirt against the cut, then walks down to the porch. A barn owl lies there, neck broken, on a glittering bed of broken glass. Damn thing flew right into his window. Jesse shakes his head. It's beautiful and bizarre. He reaches down respectfully to touch its still face. Incredible thing. Damn shame it's dead. What was it Gabriel said about them? Messengers from the underworld? Made them sound like angels, instead of like ordinary birds that flew around at top speed and banged into things -

_Plip plip plip plip_ soft on the boards and musical on the glass. He leaves it there while he gets some alcohol and sews up the cut. No sense wasting biotics on this, muscle isn't affected, it's a flesh wound and nothing more. He gets out his datapad to ignore the ache and-

Blackwatch and Overwatch has been silent since he walked away, which makes perfect sense, because he walked away very suddenly and nobody knows the classification for that after Widowmaker. But now. Now he has goodbyes.

Tens and tens of them.

_I'll be seeing you again fuckstain_ to _be safe be safe why did it end like this_ to _shit, son, I knew you were close_ to _so did you know? Were you just afraid to fight us? you traitors?_

He keeps scrolling down, looking for the one from Reyes.

Nothing. He scrolls back up. He must have missed it.

He flips to the news.

When he steps outside, the owl is still there, although a lone ant is wandering in and out of the pinions of one beige wind. The breeze picks up, ruffling its feathers in a parody of life.

He remembers body shields for him and battlefield carries, the roll of bulk between him and danger and the support of a steel arm under him. He'd always known his life was a little fragile thing with only his wits and his training to keep it burning in his body. Gabriel had been inevitable, Gabriel had been strong before he'd come and was left strong behind him, Gabriel was going to outlive him by years and years and-

He slides down the door. Glass cracks under his ass, he's going to have to be damn careful getting up because it's going to be awkward with the tweezers. This occurs to him and washes away, unimportant.

He scoops up the dead owl, smashing the ant into the porch with the side of his hand. Puts it on his knees. Buries his face in its breast (not warm, cooling, but smelling sweet and mysterious, dusty and shadowy) and feels his shoulders start shaking.

At first the noise startles him, because he did not realize it was him. Battlefield training takes over, don't blare pain like that, don't alert everyone of the injury, lock teeth, choke off the noise in the throat, wracking sobs locking his ribs and his tongue thick in his mouth, between his teeth, quiet, quiet. He hugs the dead owl in gratitude, and its wings fold around his head like a hug. He realizes he's draggling its poor breast feathers with tears but he can't stop.

Gabriel had burned out like a comet, he decides later, when the tears have slowed. And Jesse is so glad, so glad, it's finally over after the years, the struggles, the lies and silences and the constant putting down of insubordination and the constant grind down into obscurity, Gabriel can't do any more damage even if he can't fight any more fights, whatever happened, whatever they have all lost... his boss is at peace.


End file.
